Flynn inquiry has Trump grasping at distractions

San Francisco Chronicle

May 8, 2017Updated: May 8, 2017 5:58pm

Photo: Carolyn Kaster, Associated Press

FILE - In this Feb. 1, 2017 file photo, then-National Security Adviser Michael Flynn speaks during the daily news briefing at the White House, in Washington. The White House is refusing to provide lawmakers with information and documents related to President Donald Trump's first national security adviser's security clearance and payments from organizations tied to the Russian and Turkish governments. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

FILE - In this Feb. 1, 2017 file photo, then-National Security...

Despite being dismissed as President Barack Obama’s defense intelligence director, paid by Vladimir Putin’s propaganda shop, and seen dining with the Russian strongman, Michael Flynn became President Trump’s top national security aide. While Flynn’s Russian entanglements are troubling enough, they’re made more so by the outrage that Trump and company have reserved not for Flynn, but for those who exposed him.

Former acting Attorney General Sally Yates told a Senate subcommittee Monday that she repeatedly advised the White House’s top lawyer that Flynn had apparently misled Vice President Pence about his discussions with Russia’s ambassador during the campaign. The deception meant that “the national security adviser essentially could be blackmailed by the Russians.”

“You don’t want your national security adviser compromised with the Russians,” Yates added. “This was a matter of some urgency.” Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who also testified to the Senate Judiciary crime and terrorism subcommittee, said Flynn was “certainly a potential vulnerability. There’s no question about it.”

And yet Trump was far quicker to fire Yates than to get rid of Flynn. The national security adviser served 18 more days before the Washington Post revealed the attorney general’s warning, leading the administration to grudgingly dismiss him for lying to Pence. Still, Republican senators, following Trump’s lead on Twitter, expressed less concern about Yates’ warning than about how it became public and why she refused to defend Trump’s attempted Muslim ban, the proximate cause of her swift dismissal.

Meanwhile, responding to reports that Obama had also warned Trump about Flynn two days after the election, White House spokesman Sean Spicer on Monday dwelt on the renewal of Flynn’s security clearance during the prior administration — as if that bureaucratic matter outweighed the fact that Obama had fired Flynn and that Trump, despite such warnings, had hired him.

It’s no wonder that Trump has grasped at distractions. The Flynn affair serves as a damning reminder that even as his campaign stoked irrational fears of foreign enemies within, it enjoyed the avid support of a hostile foreign power.